Directed by: Aaron Moorhead, Justin Benson, Michael Cuesta, Jeffrey Nachmanoff, David Boyd
Distributed by: Disney+
Written by Anna Harrison
60/100
Matt Murdock has always been torn between two worlds: one where justice is carried in a court of law with the bang of a gavel, and the other where justice is dispensed in a back alley with bloody fists. It’s fitting, therefore, that “Daredevil: Born Again” finds itself as split as its protagonist, beholden to two competing visions and, much like Matt himself, never able to forge a peace between its own contradictions.
When “Daredevil” was resurrected from the ashes of Marvel’s Netflix universe, it was with newcomers Chris Ord and Matt Corman at the helm—original creator Drew Goddard and showrunners Steven S. DeKnight, Doug Petrie, Marco Ramirez, and Erik Oleson were nowhere to be found, and it soon became clear that Ord and Corman wanted a clean break from the Netflix show. While Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio were both set to return as Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk, respectively, “Daredevil: Born Again” jettisoned most of the original show’s supporting cast, most notably Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page and Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson, two of the most prominent characters from the original “Daredevil.” Ord and Corman shot six episodes of a planned eighteen before they were politely fired and replaced with Dario Scardapane as showrunner and “Moon Knight” and “Loki” season two heads Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead.
What went wrong has been largely kept under wraps, but it’s clear that no one was happy. Jon Bernthal, who plays Frank Castle, walked away from the original version. Charlie Cox and Vincent D’Onofrio expressed doubts. While we may never know for certain what led to the fallout, the remnants of Ord and Corman’s involvement are clear, and perhaps best exemplified by episode five, “With Interest.”
By this point in the show, Fisk has become the mayor of New York City, and though Matt has been sent reeling by a death in episode one and a troubling recent case, he has a girlfriend, Heather (Margarita Levieva), and things seem to be stable enough—for now. He goes to the bank to get a loan, where the banker turns out to be superhero Kamala Khan’s (Iman Vellani) father, Yusuf Khan (Mohan Kapur). As it turns out, there’s a robbery at the bank that day. What follows it the closest thing to a bottle episode that we can get in a nine-episode series of television where Matt and Mr. Khan must work together to thwart the robbers; Matt doesn’t have his Daredevil suit on hand, so he must rely primarily on his wits with only a small helping of his hand-to-hand prowess.
It’s a decent episode, all things considered (though the inclusion of Mr. Khan is more distracting than engaging—the whole “it’s all connected” shtick is tired by now), and largely well-constructed and engaging. But it does not feel like a “Daredevil” episode. Nor is it a clean break from the past, as evidenced by the inclusion of Mr. Khan. There’s no bite, nothing to make it stand out; in wanting to remove the show from the shackles of Netflix, Ord and Corman seem to have stuck themselves to the Disney machine. Instead, it feels like any other episode of Marvel’s Disney+ shows, even if it is better than things like “Secret Invasion” or “She-Hulk.”
It’s clear that Ord and Corman wanted more of a procedural show focusing on the court of law rather than the court of Matt Murdock’s fists. Now, there is nothing inherently wrong with ignoring the past: some of the best television shows only became the best once they discarded the past and refocused on what was working (among Marvel properties, “Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.” comes to mind). The issue with “Daredevil: Born Again” is that the retooling brings nothing exciting to the table, and the things it tries to dump—Karen, Foggy, Frank, Bullseye (Wilson Bethel)—were part of what made the first “Daredevil” so good.
So, while part of me bemoans Marvel’s inability to move on from what has been, a greater part of me feels relief that Scardapane, Benson, and Moorhead joined the show and once more made Matt full of his trademark Catholic guilt and anger instead of a wisecracking lawyer-first, vigilante-second kind of guy. Under their guidance, they sharpen the parallels between Murdock and Fisk, bring back Karen and the other supporting cast back into the fold, and dispense with the array of side characters that Ord and Corman had brought in, such as pointless serial killer Muse (Hunter Doohan), who was clearly the endgame villain in the first iteration of this show but is nothing more than a fly on the wall in the finished product.
Yet while the show bounces back from its first missteps, it is still a mishmash of two opposing ideas Frankensteined together in post-production. That the show is watchable at all considering its production is nothing short of a miracle: episode one is clearly part of Benson and Moorhead’s reshoots, the next seven or so are part of the procedural that Ord and Corman envisioned, interstitched with bits from the overhaul, and the last two finally bring us to someplace resembling where we should have started in the beginning.
Even under Benson and Moorhead, the show never reaches the heights of the original Netflix series. There is a hallway fight staged to look like it was all one continuous shot, but the lighting is poor in an uninteresting rather than purposeful way and the fight choreography weightless. (Remember what they took from us!) The newer supporting characters are unremarkable, though whether that’s the fault of the first or second iteration of this show is unclear. The violence—the cast and crew flouted the show’s TV-MA rating on the press tour—is surface level; though one character quite literally has his jaw ripped off, the blood pouring from the wound looked as thin and runny as water, and I think Frank should have spent even more time beating up those cops.
Luckily, Cox and D’Onofrio remain as watchable as ever and ensure that none of the episodes (even the ones before the reshoots) are outright bad. At worst, they are slightly boring—something that the Netflix show also fell prey to on occasion—but the show feels an exercise in wastefulness and indicative of the internal problems that have plagued Marvel for the last several years. Perhaps this will be Marvel’s come to Jesus moment, when they realize what has gone wrong within themselves, but I won’t hold my breath. “Daredevil: Born Again” sets up everything nicely for season two—but why did we have to go through a whole season of television and millions of dollars to get there?
“Daredevil: Born Again” Trailer
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